This has been a month of kids' birthday parties for us, on the organizational side and on the invitational side. My third child turns seven on Friday and her younger brother attended a birthday party for a friend of ours' son the week before. Olivia attended a ninth...
The GW Expat Blog
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advice
ATMs in Germany: Chips versus Magstripes
Although we take them very much for granted today, automated cash-dispensing machines have only been common since the late 1970s. Banks introduced the devices first in Europe, then in North America and elsewhere. Today there are an estimated 2 to 3 million ATMs in...
(In-) Convenient
A few years ago while chatting with a friend who, like me, has a German spouse, I had a mini-revelation: "There is no German word for convenient," I said. After a pause, my friend the English teacher says, "Well, that explains a hell of a lot." Both fluent German...
Dealing with Damage
Despite not being military or part of any diplomatic corps, my family and I move frequently. We moved in 2010, and then in 2012 - not counting the two additional moves within the same town from one temporary flat to another and then into the house we bought, and now...
White Knuckles
Galavanting about Europe in my early twenties, I spent a spring holiday in Italy. The journey began in Germany, meandering from Frankfurt down through the Black Forest, into Switzerland and through the Gotthard Tunnel (17 km!) to get to the Italian border. The entire...
Au Pair in Germany – the Hosting How to Guide
Like Sarah did several years ago, I mentioned our foray in having an au pair. We had had one from South Korea last summer, a relationship which ended pretty miserably. Despite our efforts to have fair and adjusted expectations of a young woman, age 20, from a culture...
Expat Tip: Buy an E-Reader
I am a self-confessed bookworm. Books are a significant part of my life, and no day is complete unless I have spent part of it reading. Moving to Germany in 2000, I spent years on the hunt for books I could read. At first, devoted as I was to achieving fluency in the...
Teaching ESL in Germany
I recently finished a two-week stint of teaching intensive English for a company that has been contracted to provide training for unemployed people. The unemployment office sends a lucky few - in this case five people - to take a course that is meant to help make them...
Expat Life Advice: Fill Your Tank
I have written a few posts about homesickness here at German Way, not because I am constantly homesick, but because it is a major theme in an expat's life. The first wave of cultural euphoria keeps you riding high in your new surroundings for about 6 weeks, and then...
American Expats, the IRS, FATCA and Other F-words
Besides "IRS," Americans can now add another item to their list of ominous acronyms: FATCA. Like most things related to income taxes, the FATCA issue has a lot of people in a dither. As if US tax law wasn't already complicated enough, along comes FATCA to gum up the...
German – from Berlin to rural Hessen
Being a Yorkshire lass at heart who, despite many years in the south of England, has never managed to say a 'barth' instead of 'bath' or 'grarss' instead of 'grass', I am sympathetic to local dialects. In London, I loved hearing true cockneys with their staccato...
Say cheese
It is not allowed, you know, to require photos from job applicants in the UK. CVs arrive as faceless email attachments. There was even talk, a while back and possibly still ongoing, of making applications completely anonymous, removing the name in bold across the top...
Don’t Get Too Comfortable: a cautionary tale
Admittedly, after six years I felt pretty savvy with the whole expat thing. I had lived in two major German cities (Dusseldorf, Hamburg), spent two years living near Zurich, Switzerland, and had travelled to ten other European countries. I even felt comfortable go at...
Are Home Appliances Boring?
... if so, you must have the wrong brand. Moving from Germany back to North America, it has become painfully evident to me that the German obsession with perfection in engineering doesn’t translate across the Atlantic. In multiple rented spaces, I have made do with a...
Gone Fishin’
Recently we spent a long weekend on the shores of one of the thousands of lakes that dot Ontario. The weather was fantastic, so we spent lots of time paddling, in canoes and in the pool. Most of the time, however, we spent fishing. The kids had a fantastic time trying...
Looking to Buy? Take Your Time
This blog has covered the topic of renting an apartment many times (in posts by Hyde and Chloe) and I have written a bit on the topic of home ownership. But where do you start if you are looking to buy property in Germany? The first stop for anyone interested in...
A different type of renting
The friends we left behind in London all had one thing in common - their desire to get themselves on the property ladder. Had we stayed I suspect we would have started hunting around for somewhere to buy in just the same way. It is simply what you do when you're a...
For the Expat-Pet-People
It seems that I have blogged quite a bit about dogs, here at The German Way Expat Blog (There's a Dog in the Pub and Moving with Max). The reason for this is because my evolution as an expat in German-speaking Europe has coincided with my evolution as a dog owner....
Put Away Your Checkbook
Of all the things one can miss about a country after departure, the banking system probably shouldn't be at the top of the list. For this ex-expat, however, it is actually one of the things I miss about Germany. The banking system there has arrived in the digital age,...
Luisa Weiss’ Advice for the Expat in Germany
It's Monday, but I got to talk to the creator and author behind the popular food blog The Wednesday Chef, Luisa Weiss, last week. She's also the author of the best-selling memoir, My Berlin Kitchen which came out late last year, and as you may have guessed, she lives...
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